


The Pain of Discipline; The Pain of Regret

by Erinyes_kiss



Category: Killjoys - Fandom, Pacific Rim
Genre: Crossovering, Gen, Pacific Rim Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 22:04:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8177773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erinyes_kiss/pseuds/Erinyes_kiss
Summary: Sometimes a lie is the easiet way to tell the truth. Easiest for him, anyhow





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lethally](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lethally/gifts).



 

_Twelve went to fight the devil in Arkan. One came back._

The old machine looked weary somehow. It stood on jointed, tri-partite feet, slumped into the embrace of the scaffolding rack. The paint had worn away on the joints, scoured from the battled scoured metal by fire, venom, and electricity. Khylen reached out and pressed his hand against the worked machinery. It was just metal and circuits, programming and neurotech so advanced it was still almost magic, but it felt alive under his palm. As if all that bravery, will, and sacrifice had sunk into the bones of the thing.

“You _could_ have told her the truth. It wouldn’t have killed you.”

Age had withered him, but it had done nothing to make him more bearable. Khylen gave the old giant an affectionate pat and turned around.

“It might have killed _her_.”

Hermann gave him a disgruntled look through new eyes. “At least she’d have known why.”

It was rich of Hermann to talk about lying. They were lies the two of them, very good lies generations in the making. Bellus Hardy had never existed, but she’d done everything that was her reputation boasted -- complaining bitterly all the way.

As for Khylen…

He turned back to the Jaeger, trying to catch shape of his face in the bruised metal. For a second he thought he saw the ghost of his old self, sifting through the molecules like the shifty newt he’d been.

“It was as much of the truth as she could bear,” he said.

“None of it?” Hermann said.

Bellus anywhere but here. The foundry was where they’d left their old identities, kicking around the reactors to keep the Jaegers company as they slept.

“We destroyed the world, what part of that says, ‘trust us, we know what we’re doing?’” he asked. “There was enough truth to keep her safe, to send her in the right direction.”

The hand on his shoulder was more callused than the mathlete pill’s had ever gotten. “We did save the world too,” Hermann said. “For a while.”

Maybe. Maybe the others had. Khylen -- Newt -- had sold his psychological integrity for hubris, and given the monsters another way into the world. Creeping through the breach they’d learned to open in the subconscious mind, filling brains with Kaiju sap

Twelve Jagers had gone to Arkansas. One had come back -- Mako Mori screaming her defiance through the straining joints and venting plasma of a Dancer that would never dance again. They’d bought humanity time to escape the dying planet. Humanity, and whatever drifting with the Kaiju had turned the two scientists into.

“We should have died,” he said.

“Well, that would have been stupid,” Hermann sniped promptly. “Who would have stood watch then?”

Khylen closed his eyes. “She makes me think we could win,” he said. “It will break my heart when she dies.”

Even “buck up, man” Hermann couldn’t bring himself to deny that. One way or another, all the heroes died. They sacrificed themselves or were sacrificed, they died bravely or futilely, they went to their death stoically or screaming their rage -- but they _all_ died.

“She _is_ Pentecost,” Hermann said. “As close as we could make her -- his genes, his determination, all the bits of her that she added in. If she dies, it won’t be until they’re defeated.”

“That’s no comfort,” Khylen said. “Not now that seeing myself through her eyes has made me realise what old monsters we are.”

“The lesser monsters,” Hermann reminded him.

Were they though? Monsters on the right side, but was there any way to be only a fraction of a monster? It was, Newt -- Khylen -- supposed, too late to consider the ailing health of his morality. At this point, a thousand Scarbacks could have bled themselves out without tipping the scales on his sins.

“Cheer up, old man,” Hermann said. The old, brusque accent found its way up through centuries of wear and tear. “Worse things happen at sea.”


End file.
